Low-income SC students eligible for $75M in school vouchers under proposed program
Thousands of low-income South Carolina students would be eligible for annual $5,000 school vouchers under a three-year pilot program advanced Tuesday by a House panel.
The proposal, a substantially pared down version of a school voucher bill under consideration in the Senate, appears to have a far better chance of gaining bipartisan support than the current Senate version because it does not pay for the vouchers by diverting money earmarked for public schools.
The bill instead pays for the vouchers through a $75 million expenditure from the state’s contingency reserve fund and limits eligibility to 5,000 elementary-age students.
It’s intended to provide opportunities for children whose needs are not being met by their current public schools, but whose parents cannot afford private education or to send their kids to another public school that charges tuition to out-of-district students.
“Parents want a voice in their children’s education and they want a choice as to their children’s education,” House Ways and Means Chairman Murrell Smith, the bill’s lead sponsor, said Tuesday. “And the time’s come for those parents to have a choice right now.”
Unlike the expansive Senate bill, which permits parents to spend the vouchers on tutors, transportation to school and private financial managers, among other education-related expenses, the House pilot limits expenditures to school tuition, fees and textbooks.
To qualify for a voucher, students must be in kindergarten through sixth grades and be Medicaid-eligible or have a family income no more than 185% of the poverty level. In addition to low-income students, the pilot also sets aside up to 500 of the 5,000 annual vouchers for children of active duty military members.
If more than 5,000 students apply for the program in a given year, state education officials would use a lottery system to select voucher recipients.
“The eligibility of this helps us with the population that has had the least amount of choice,” state Rep. Shannon Erickson, R-Beaufort, one of the bill’s sponsors, said Tuesday. “Giving them the opportunity to have choices, even if it’s just across the county line, would be a real big boon for parents to feel like they could put their children in a place where they can learn effectively.”
State Rep. Bill Whitmire, R-Oconee, who has opposed school voucher bills in the past, said he would support this one due to the limits it sets on eligibility and scope.
“To me this is by far the most reasonable choice bill I’ve come across,” Whitmire said. “It’s got a sunset clause, it’s for the poor and it’s $75 million from the contingency fund. I can’t see how this won’t at least help some children in our state.”
While more palatable to public school proponents than the Senate’s voucher bill, some still take issue with aspects of the House legislation.
Janelle Rivers, an education advocacy specialist with the League of Women Voters of South Carolina, and Patrick Kelly, director of government affairs with the Palmetto State Teachers Association, questioned the bill’s accessibility and accountability provisions.
As written, private schools that receive public money through the voucher program would not be allowed to discriminate on the basis of race, color or national origin, but could still turn away students on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, disability, religion or academic aptitude.
And while the bill requires private schools that accept vouchers to administer national achievement or state standardized tests, it does not mandate that those tests be the same ones public school students take.
As a result, it may not be possible to directly compare the results of students enrolled in the voucher program to similar students in traditional public schools to determine whether the program is serving its intended purpose, Kelly said.
House Majority Leader Gary Simrill, R-York, another of the bill’s sponsors, said he’d like the Ways and Means Committee to consider the accessibility questions when it takes up the bill Wednesday.
Gov. Henry McMaster, who has a close working relationship with the House, said he supports a school voucher bill.
“We’ll take it however they do (it),” the governor told reporters Tuesday. “I’m confident that the three-year pilot will produce enormous results.”
Voucher bill could face legal challenge
If South Carolina lawmakers do ultimately pass a school voucher bill this year, it’s likely to face a legal challenge over the constitutionality of spending public money on private schools, Republicans concede.
The state Supreme Court in 2020 struck down McMaster’s plan to use $32 million in federal COVID-19 relief dollars to provide tuition grants of up to $6,500 per student for about 5,000 private school students across the state.
Justices ruled that the state’s constitution prohibited spending public money on private schools.
Smith, R-Sumter, said he didn’t think the state Supreme Court’s previous ruling was binding on a future school voucher program and believed that if his bill passed it would survive a legal challenge.
“I think there are differences here that allow this to go forward,” he said Tuesday, adding that he’s confident the bill will be declared constitutional.
As to how South Carolina would fund, and possibly expand, the voucher program after the three-year pilot expires, Smith said that likely would depend on what the state Supreme Court rules in any future lawsuit over the bill.
This story was originally published February 8, 2022 at 3:55 PM.